“We’re working in an area that there are a lot of dead trees and we’re going to use these trees as basically training,” said Andy McCrady, an instructor.

Roughly 300 emergency responders will attend the two week academy to improve their knowledge and skills for combating wildfires and managing large scale incidents that occur in Texas.

“The idea and the goal is to get basically everybody trained up on the same level. so on an actual incident, or an actual fire, the incident commander can look at these individuals when they are dispatched out to the location, say we’re all qualified in that way we can all work together on the incident and accomplish the goal,” said Stuart Morris, with the Texas A&M Forest Service.

In 2018, Texas saw 10,541 wildfires burning more than 550,000 acres in land. Skills from this training will come in handy to emergency responders should they have to battle wildfires in our state.

The training will familiarize emergency responders with the Incident Command System, which is a management system designed to enable effective and efficient incident management by integrating a combination of facilities, equipment, personnel, procedures, and communications operating within a common organizational structure.